Would it be unadvisable to buy a canti equipped cross bike right now? With all the disc options it seems like disc is the way of the future. (in cross at least) Anyway if i buy a canti bike will i be kicking myself in two years when the whole world is on discs?

Have you tried cantis? They are quite good if you spend some time setting them up. If you think you can live with cantis and won't want to buy a new bike when discs get mainstream for good i would go for it

_________________"Stay cool and try to survive" A. Klier to the other members of the Garmin classics squad the night before P-R.

I've ridden mountain bikes when canti's were the only thing available then v-brakes. Then came disc brakes and on a mtb discs are truly the way to go. I run canti's and standard brakes on my cross and roadbike. They always perform at a level that is more than satisfactory to me. So for me to go to disc for cross or road is fixing something that is really not broken. With electronic shifting and disc brakes where they are not really a true performance enhancer its taking a simple machine and turning it into a much more complicated machine with many more things that can and will go wrong as it ages.

It'll be quite a while before discs get to be lighter weight than cantis. If you're racing cross, it isn't about stopping as much as going fast, so there really isn't that much motivation when racing to get on discs -- they are more a benefit in MTB and in the minds of armchair cross racers. Lower weight will help you better, assuming you adjust your cantis properly. If you want more braking and you aren't riding in pig slop all the time, try mini-V brakes. Big improvement, low cost, and still use your canti bosses.

One thing is that right now disc mounts are fugly and anything but aero. Once road/cross discs are really sorted out, I suspect the mounts will be different and more aerodynamically positioned -- it was never an issue with MTB but a road bike definitely calls for a more aero positioning and there are already a few coming out. So your disc frame may become dated anyway.

Lastly, discs aren't the only big change happening. If you are planning for a few years ahead (and who really does that in cross anyway?), remember that electronic shifting is coming on strong and great systems will be available at much much lower prices. So if you've planned for the future of discs but not the future of electronics, you still won't want the frame. I feel it's mandatory if you're planning for discs to plan for electronics as well. And both are, to an extent, a commitment.

Oh, and very lastly, remember that right now practically every road disc system has been recalled. The only one that hasn't, Shimano's, was released in a hesitant mid-range version because Shimano didn't believe it was DuraAce-quality yet. That says something. It works nicely but it's just borrowed hardware from MTB right now and not exactly what disc will look like in a couple years.

Buying a frame right now you either have to plan for disc and electronics, in my view -- which means continuous cable housing saddles so you can mount hydraulics later and means all the drilling and bottom bracket cutouts for electronics (you need big holes going into the tubes from the bottom bracket to accommodate cables and connectors) -- or buy something that isn't targeted that way. Not everybody will change and there's no reason you have to be on the technology leading edge. Frankly a lot of it is pushed by manufacturers trying to sell something new. As you've probably read, most serious cross racers don't see the need for discs unless someone can make discs a lot lighter than cantis. That ain't gonna happen soon and even then, issues with wheel swaps and bent rotors and other hassles will slow their universal adoption.

I've said it elsewhere, but electronically-driven hydraulic braking is coming. You'll have nothing more than a Di2 lever with a variable actuated switch for braking, a control wire, and all the hydraulics running under electronic control at the disc caliper. With this you can even have antilock braking and other brake control technologies since they all count on having a wired control element. That will allow people to adjust disc brake power levels -- higher on road bikes, lower on cross, etc. -- and program it completely to just what you want. And the weight will be less than current cable-actuated brakes.

In any case, if you have the power unit to actuate the caliper at the brake, why would you not drive it directly, without going via hydraulics?

There are already interesting prototypes in testing. All the connectivity can be run internally. It lets you program your braking, which actually gets to be quite amazing. Weight is a lot less because of all the housing/fluid/piston chamber etc. that you can dispense with. I've seen two versions, one feeding off a shared battery (actually, off the same seat post battery as the shifters) and one with individual batteries in the two units for redundancy. It really doesn't take much power so it's more a question of how paranoid the market will be about brake failure due to drained batteries. There are all kinds of backup and warning systems worked into it already. You'd have to be far off in the wilds to have any reason to worry. Just look at what autos have, not to mention aircraft -- there isn't a hydraulic piston under your brake pedal any longer. And when you consider the number of brake failure modes you can have right now with hydraulic lines, you actually simplify and increase the reliability of your brakes.

I went with a canti Cross bike over the winter for a single reason...all my bikes are 700c and 10-speed shimano/SRAM. Thus, all my wheels are theoretically compatible with all my bikes.

While I could ride my carbon clinchers on my CX bike, I'm not sure it's a good idea...The only real advantage for my system is having 1-2 less wheelsets sitting around and that I can keep my tools/servicing simplified. My commuter and CX bike share 2 wheelsets; one for road-only and another for CX/trails. My road bike doesn't share wheels with the others.

I'm sticking with canti for now but once disc becomes more popular on road bikes I'll make the switch across everything. I do want a 29er so it might be easier to make the change at that point too.

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